I need to crowdsource…since all our medical staff are out of the office.
I know that when children are severely malnurished, melanin gets stripped from their hair. So, naturally brunette children will appear blonde or red-headed when they are starving. I know this happens, and can find lots of articles about it, but what’s the MECHANISM for it??
Is the melanin CONSUMED or can the body no longer PRODUCE it during severe malnutrition, due to missing or depleted macro/micro-nutrients?
Thank you!
Well, since hair’s not actually living, and only the follicle is, it’s probably more of a situation where the hair follicle quits producing melanin into the hair
According to wikipedia melanin is derived from the amino-acid tyrosine. As bump pointed out, hair is dead tissue and there’s no way for the body to extract melanin. So the most likely cause of malnutrition lightening is tyrosine deficiency. Whether or not the body can direct the use of tyrosine I don’t know.
I was able, finally, to find an article about this. There’s a 2007 article in the British Journal of Nutrition, which is heavily cited.
There is a definite correlation between melanin in hair and malnutrition. The actual cause is unknown, but thought to be related to use of tyrosine or phenylalanine, an inhibition of the enzymes that break down these amino acids, and/or an Fe deficiency.
And, yeah, I should have thought about the body’s inability to strip chemicals from the hair. That was just stupid on my part.